Standard Cantonese

Cantonese
廣州話 / 广州话 Gwóngjàu wá[1]
Spoken in: Southern China 
Region: the Pearl River Delta (central Guangdong; Hong Kong, Macau); United Kingdom; Vancouver; Toronto; San Francisco, New York City, San Gabriel Valley
Total speakers:
Language family: Sino-Tibetan
 Chinese
  Cantonese
   Cantonese 
Official status
Official language in: De facto official spoken language in Hong Kong and Macau. Recognised regional language in Suriname.
Regulated by: No official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: zh
ISO 639-2: chi (B)  zho (T)
ISO 639-3: yue
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Standard Cantonese, or Guangzhou dialect, is the prestige dialect of Cantonese. It is used in Hong Kong and Macau as the spoken, though not written, language of government and instruction in the schools. It is spoken natively in and around the city of Guangzhou in Southern China, by the majority population of Hong Kong and Macau, and as a lingua franca of Guangdong province and some neighbouring areas. It is also spoken by many Cantonese immigrants in Singapore and Malaysia, though the Taishanese dialect is the most common variety of Cantonese spoken by overseas Chinese communities in Canada, the United States, Australia, and Europe.

Contents

Names

In English, the term "Cantonese" is ambiguous. It generally means the prestige dialect, as it is the form taught in Western schools and used by Cantonese dictionaries as the representative pronunciation of Cantonese. However, it may also refer to all the Yue (Cantenese) dialects. To disambiguate, Cantonese in the narrow sense may be specified as "Guangzhou dialect".[2]

In Chinese, Standard Cantonese is customarily called "Guangzhou Prefecture Speech".[3] In Guangdong province people also call it "Provincial Capital speech".[4] In Hong Kong and Macau, people usually call it "Guangzhou Province speech".[5]

Phonology

Through the Standard Cantonese, Cantonese is more standardized than any branch of Chinese other than Standard Mandarin and Classical Chinese. Below is the pronunciation used by most educators, the one usually heard on TV and radio in formal broadcast like news reports. Common variations are also described.

There are about 630 combinations of syllable onsets (initial consonants) and syllable rimes (remainder of the syllable), not counting tone. Some of these, such as /ɛː˨/ and /ei˨/ (欸) , /pʊŋ˨/ (埲), /kʷɪŋ˥/ (扃) are not common any more; some such as /kʷɪk˥/ and /kʷʰɪk˥/ (隙), or /kʷaːŋ˧˥/ and /kɐŋ˧˥/ (梗) which has traditionally had two equally correct pronunciations are beginning to be pronounced with only one particular way uniformly by its speakers (and this usually happens because the unused pronunciation is almost unique to that word alone) thus making the unused sounds effectively disappear from the language; while some such as /kʷʰɔːk˧/ (擴), /pʰuːi˥/ (胚), /jɵy˥/ (錐), /kɛː˥/ (痂) have alternative nonstandard pronunciations which have become mainstream (as /kʷʰɔːŋ˧/, /puːi˥/, /tʃɵy˥/ and /kʰɛː˥/ respectively), again making some of the sounds disappear from the everyday use of the language; and yet others such as /faːk˧/ (謋), /fɐŋ˩/ (揈), /tɐp˥/ (耷) have become popularly (but erroneously) believed to be made-up/borrowed words to represent sounds in modern vernacular Cantonese when they have in fact been retaining those sounds before these vernacular usages became popular.

On the other hand, there are new words circulating in Hong Kong which use combinations of sounds which had not appeared in Standard Cantonese before, such as get1 (note: this is non standard usage as /ɛːt/ was never an accepted/valid final for sounds in Standard Cantonese, though the final sound /ɛːt/ has appeared in vernacular Cantonese before this, /pʰɛːt˨/ - notably in describing the measure word of gooey or sticky substances such as mud, glue, chewing gum, etc.); the sound is borrowed from the English word gag to mean the act of amusing others by a (possibly practical) joke.

Initials

Initials (or onsets) are initial consonants of possible syllables. The following is the inventory for Standard Cantonese as represented in IPA:

  Labial Coronal Palatal Velar Glottal
plain sibilant plain labialized
Nasal m n     ŋ    
Stop plain p t ts   k ( kʷ ) ( ʔ )
aspirated pʰ tʰ tsʰ   kʰ ( kʷʰ )  
Fricative f   s       h
Approximant   l   ( j )   ( w )  

Note the aspiration contrast and the lack of phonation contrast for stops. The sibilant affricates are grouped with the stops for compactness in displaying the chart.

Some linguists prefer to analyze /j/ and /w/ as part of finals to make them analogous to the /i/ and /u/ medials in Standard Mandarin, especially in comparative phonological studies. However, since final-heads only appear with null initial, /k/ or /kʰ/, analyzing them as part of the initials greatly reduces the count of finals at the cost of only adding four initials. Some linguists analyze a /ʔ/ (glottal stop) when a vowel other than /i/, /u/ or /y/ begins a syllable.

The position of the coronals varies from dental to alveolar, with /t/ and /tʰ/ more likely to be dental. The position of the sibilants /ts/, /tsʰ/, and /s/ are usually alveolar ([ts], [tsʰ], and [s]), but can be postalveolar ([tʃ], [tʃʰ], and [ʃ]) or alveolo-palatal ([tɕ], [tɕʰ], and [ɕ]), especially before the front high vowels/iː/, /ɪ/, or /yː/.

Some native speakers cannot distinguish between /n/ and /l/, and between /ŋ/ and the null initial. Usually they pronounce only /l/ and the null initial. See the discussion on phonological shift below.

Finals

Finals (or rimes) are the remaining part of the syllable after the initial is taken off. There are two kinds of finals in Standard Cantonese, depending on vowel length. The following chart lists all possible finals in Standard Cantonese as represented in IPA:

aː ɛː iː ɔː uː œː yː
Long Short Long Short Long Short Long Short Long Short Long Short Long Short
-i / -y aːi ɐi   ei     ɔːi   uːi     ɵy    
-u aːu ɐu ɛːu¹   iːu     ou            
-m aːm ɐm ɛːm¹   iːm                  
-n aːn ɐn     iːn   ɔːn   uːn     ɵn yːn  
-ŋ aːŋ ɐŋ ɛːŋ     ɪŋ ɔːŋ     ʊŋ œːŋ      
-p aːp ɐp ɛːp¹   iːp                  
-t aːt ɐt     iːt   ɔːt   uːt     ɵt yːt  
-k aːk ɐk ɛːk     ɪk ɔːk     ʊk œːk      
Syllabic nasals: [m̩] [ŋ̩]
¹Finals [ɛːu], [ɛːm] and [ɛːp] only appear in colloquial speech. They are absent from some analyses and romanization schemes.
Chart of vowels used in Cantonese

Based on the chart above, the following central vowels pairs are usually considered to be allophones:

[ɛː] - [e], [iː] - [ɪ], [ɔː] - [o], [uː] - [ʊ], and [œː] - [ɵ].

Although that satisfies the minimal pair requirement, some linguists find it difficult to explain why the coda affects the vowel length. They recognize the following two allophone groups instead:

[e] - [ɪ] and [o] - [ʊ] - [ɵ].

In that way, the phoneme set consists of seven long central vowels and three short central vowels that are in contrast with three of the long vowels, as presented in the following chart:

aː ɔː ɛː iː uː œː yː
Long Short Long Short Long Short Long Long Long Long
-i / -y aːi ɐi ɔːi ɵy   ei   uːi    
-u aːu ɐu   ou     iːu      
-m aːm ɐm         iːm      
-n aːn ɐn ɔːn ɵn     iːn uːn   yːn
-ŋ aːŋ ɐŋ ɔːŋ ʊŋ ɛːŋ ɪŋ     œːŋ  
-p aːp ɐp         iːp      
-t aːt ɐt ɔːt ɵt     iːt uːt   yːt
-k aːk ɐk ɔːk ʊk ɛːk ɪk     œːk  
Syllabic nasals: [m̩] [ŋ̩]

Tones

Standard Cantonese has six tones, although it is often said to have nine. In Chinese, the number of possible tones depends on the syllable type. There are six contour tones in syllables that end in a vowel or nasal consonant. (Some of things have more than one realization, but such differences are seldom used to distinguish words.) In syllables that end in a stop consonant, the number of tones is reduced to three; in Chinese descriptions, these "entering tones" are treated separately, so that Cantonese is traditionally said to have nine tones. However, phonetically these are a conflation of tone and syllable type; the number of phonemic tones is six.

Syllable type Open syllables Stopped syllables
Tone name Upper Level
(陰平)		 Upper Rising
(陰上)		 Upper Departing
(陰去)		 Lower Level
(陽平)		 Lower Rising
(陽上)		 Lower Departing
(陽去)		 Upper Entering #1
(上陰入)		 Upper Entering #2
(下陰入)		 Lower Entering
(陽入)
Pinyin tone number 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (or 1) 8 (or 3) 9 (or 6)
Examples 詩 史 試 時 市 是 識 錫 食
Tone letters si˥, si˥˧ si˧˥ si˧ si˨˩, si˩ si˩˧ si˨ sik˥ sik˧ sik˨
Tone diacritics sí, sî sǐ sī si̖, sı̏ si̗ sì sík sīk sìk
Description high level,
high falling		 medium rising medium level low falling,
very low level		 low rising low level high level medium level low level
Yale Romanization sī, sì sí si sīh, sìh síh sih sīk sik sihk

For purposes of meters in Chinese poetry, the first and fourth tones are the "level tones" (平聲), while the rest are the "oblique tones" (仄聲).

The first tone can be either high level or high falling without affecting the meaning of the words being spoken. Most speakers are in general not consciously aware of when they use and when to use high level and high falling. In Hong Kong, the high level is more usual. In Guangzhou, the high falling tone is more usual.

The numbers "394052786" when pronounced in Standard Cantonese, will give the nine tones in order (Romanisation (Yale) saam1, gau2, sei3, ling4, ng5, yi6, chat7, baat8, luk9), thus giving a good mnemonic for remembering the nine tones.

There are not any more tone levels in Standard Cantonese than in Standard Mandarin (three if one excludes the Cantonese low falling tone, which begins on the third level and needs somewhere to fall); Standard Cantonese just has more tone contours.

Like other Cantonese, Standard Cantonese preserves the distinction in Middle Chinese in the manner shown in the chart below.

 Middle Chinese  Standard Cantonese
Tone Initial Central Vowel Tone Name Tone Contour Tone Number
Level V−   Upper Level ˥, ˥˧ 1
V+ Lower Level ˨˩, ˩ 4
Rising V− Upper Rising ˧˥ 2
V+ Lower Rising ˩˧ 5
Departing V− Upper Departing ˧ 3
V+ Lower Departing ˨ 6
Entering V− Short Upper Entering #1 ˥ʔ 7 (1)
Long Upper Entering #2 ˧ʔ 8 (3)
V+   Lower Entering ˨ʔ 9 (6)

V− = voiceless initial consonant, V+ = voiced initial consonant. The distinction of consonants found in Middle Chinese was preserved by the distinction of tones in Cantonese. The vowel length further affects the Upper Entering tone.

Standard Cantonese is special in the way that the vowel length can affect both the rhyme and the tone. Some linguists believe that the vowel length feature may have roots in the Old Chinese language.

Phonological shifts

Like other languages, Cantonese is constantly undergoing sound changes, processes where more and more native speakers of a language change the pronunciations of certain sounds.

Previous shifts

One shift that affected Cantonese in the past was the loss of distinction between the alveolar and the alveolo-palatal (sometimes pronounced as postalveolar) sibilants, which occurred during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This distinction was documented in many Cantonese dictionaries and pronunciation guides published prior to the 1950s but is no longer distinguished in any modern Cantonese dictionary.

Publications that documented this distinction include:

The depalatalization of sibilants caused many words that were once distinct to sound the same. For comparison, this distinction is still made in modern Standard Mandarin, with the old alveolo-palatal sibilants in Cantonese corresponding to the retroflex sibilants in Mandarin. For instance:

Sibilant Category Character Modern Cantonese Old Cantonese Standard Mandarin
Unaspirated affricate 將 /tsœːŋ/ (alveolar) /tsœːŋ/ (alveolar) /tɕiɑŋ/ (alveolo-palatal)
張 /tɕœːŋ/ (alveolo-palatal) /tʂɑŋ/ (retroflex)
Aspirated affricate 槍 /tsʰœːŋ/ (alveolar) /tsʰœːŋ/ (alveolar) /tɕʰiɑŋ/ (alveolo-palatal)
昌 /tɕʰœːŋ/ (alveolo-palatal) /tʂʰɑŋ/ (retroflex)
Fricative 相 /sœːŋ/ (alveolar) /sœːŋ/ (alveolar) /ɕiɑŋ/ (alveolo-palatal)
傷 /ɕœːŋ/ (alveolo-palatal) /ʂɑŋ/ (retroflex)

Even though the aforementioned references observed the distinction, most of them also noted that the depalatalization phenomenon was already occurring at the time. Williams (1856) writes:

The initials ch and ts are constantly confounded, and some persons are absolutely unable to detect the difference, more frequently calling the words under ts as ch, than contrariwise.

Cowles (1914) adds:

"s" initial may be heard for "sh" initial and vice versa.

A vestige of this palatalization difference is sometimes reflected in the romanization scheme used to romanize Cantonese names in Hong Kong. For instance, many names will be spelled with sh even though the "sh sound" (/ɕ/) is no longer used to pronounce the word. Examples include the surname 石 (/sɛːk˨/), which is often romanized as Shek, and the names of places like Sha Tin (沙田; /saː˥ tʰiːn˩/).

After the shift was complete, even though the alveolo-palatal sibilants were no longer distinguished, they still continue to occur in complementary distribution with the alveolar sibilants, making the two groups of sibilants allophones. Thus, most modern Standard Cantonese speakers will pronounce the alveolar sibilants unless the following vowel is /iː/, /i/, or /y/, in which case the alveolo-palatal (or postalveolar) is pronounced. Canton romanization attempts to reflect this phenomenon in its romanization scheme, even though most current Cantonese romanization schemes don't.

The alveolo-palatal sibilants occur in complementary distribution with the retroflex sibilants in Mandarin as well, with the alveolo-palatal sibilants only occurring before /i/, or /y/. However, Mandarin also retains the medials, where /i/ and /y/ can occur, as can be seen in the examples above. Cantonese had lost its medials sometime ago in its history, reducing the ability for speakers to distinguish its sibilant initials.

Current shifts

Main article: Hong Kong Cantonese

In modern-day Hong Kong, many younger native speakers are unable to distinguish between certain phoneme pairs and merge one sound into another. Although that is often considered as substandard and is denounced as being "lazy sounds" (懶音), it is becoming more common and is influencing other Cantonese-speaking regions.

Romanization

Cantonese romanization schemes are based on the Standard Cantonese. The major ones are Barnett-Chao, Meyer-Wempe, the Chinese government's Guangdong romanization, Yale and Jyutping (read: Yutping). While they do not differ greatly, Yale is the one most commonly seen in the west today. The Hong Kong linguist Sidney Lau modified the Yale system for his popular Cantonese-as-a-second-language course, so that is another system used today by contemporary Cantonese learners.

Early Western effort

Systematic efforts to develop an alphabetic representation of the Standard Cantonese began with the arrival of Protestant missionaries in China early in the nineteenth century. Romanization was considered both a tool to help new missionaries learn the dialect more easily and a quick route for the unlettered to achieve gospel literacy. Earlier Catholic missionaries, mostly Portuguese, had developed romanization schemes for the pronunciation current in the court and capitol city of China but made few efforts at romanizing other dialects.

Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary in China published a "Vocabulary of the Canton Dialect" (1828) with a rather unsystematic romanized pronunciation. Elijah Coleman Bridgman and Samuel Wells Williams in their "Chinese Chrestomathy in the Canton Dialect" (1841) were the progenitors of a long-lived lineage of related romanizations with minor variations embodied in the works of James Dyer Ball, Ernest John Eitel, and Immanuel Gottlieb Genăhr (1910). Bridgman and Williams based their system on the phonetic alphabet and diacritics proposed by Sir William Jones for South Asian languages. Their romanization system embodied the phonological system in a local dialect rhyme dictionary, the Fenyun cuoyao, which was widely used and easily available at the time and is still available today. Samuel Wells Willams' Tonic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Canton Dialect (Yinghua fenyun cuoyao 1856), is an alphabetic rearrangement, translation and annotation of the Fenyun. In order to adapt the system to the needs of users at a time when there were only local variants and no standard—although the speech of the western suburbs, xiguan, of Guangzhou was the prestige variety at the time—Williams suggested that users learn and follow their teacher's pronunciation of his chart of Cantonese syllables. It was apparently Bridgman's innovation to mark the tones with an open circles (upper register tones) or an underlined open circle (lower register tones) at the four corners of the romanized word in analogy with the traditional Chinese system of marking the tone of a character with a circle (lower left for "even," upper left for "rising," upper right for "going," and lower right for "entering" tones). John Chalmers, in his "English and Cantonese pocket-dictionary" (1859) simplified the marking of tones using the acute accent to mark "rising" tones and the grave to mark "going" tones and no diacritic for "even" tones and marking upper register tones by italics (or underlining in handwritten work). "Entering" tones could be distinguished by their consonantal ending. Nicholas Belfeld Dennys used Chalmers romanization in his primer. This method of marking tones was adopted in the Yale romanization (with low register tones marked with an 'h'). A new romanization was developed in the first decade of the twentieth century which eliminated the diacritics on vowels by distinguishing vowel quality by spelling differences (e.g. a/aa, o/oh). Diacritics were used only for marking tones. The name of Tipson is associated with this new romanization which still embodied the phonology of the Fenyun to some extent. It is the system used in Meyer-Wempe and Cowles' dictionaries and O'Melia's textbook and many other works in the first half of the twentieth century. It was the standard romanization until the Yale system supplanted it. The distinguished linguist, Y. R. Chao developed a Cantonese adaptation of his Gwoyeu romanization system which he used in his "Cantonese Primer." The front matter to this book contains a review and comparison of a number of the systems mentioned in this paragraph. The GR system was not widely used.

Cantonese research in Hong Kong

Main article: Hong Kong Government Cantonese Romanisation

An influential work on Standard Cantonese, A Chinese Syllabary Pronounced According to the Dialect of Canton, written by Wong Shik Ling, was published in 1941. He derived an IPA-based transcription system, the S. L. Wong system, used by many Chinese dictionaries later published in Hong Kong. Although Wong also derived a romanisation scheme, also known as S. L. Wong system, it is not widely used as his transcription scheme.

The romanization advocated by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong (LSHK) is called jyutping, which solves many of the inconsistencies and problems of the older, favored, and more familiar system of Yale Romanization, but departs considerably from it in a number of ways unfamiliar to Yale users. The phonetic values of letters are not quite familiar to whom had studied English. Some effort has been undertaken to promote jyutping, with some official supports, but it is too early to tell how successful it is.

Another popular scheme is Standard Cantonese Pinyin Schemes, which is the only romanization system accepted by Hong Kong Education and Manpower Bureau and Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority. Books and studies for teachers and students in primary and secondary schools usually use this scheme. But there is quite a lot teachers and students using the transcription system of S. L. Wong.

However, learners may feel frustrated that most native Cantonese speakers, no matter how educated they are, really are not familiar with any romanization system. Apparently, there is no motive for local people to learn any of these systems. The romanization systems are not included in the education system either in Hong Kong or in Guangdong province. In practice, Hong Kong people follow a loose unnamed romanisation scheme used by the Hong Kong Government.

Written Cantonese

Main article: Written Cantonese

The Standard Cantonese has the most developed literature of any form of Chinese after Classical Chinese and Mandarin. It is used primarily in Hong Kong and in overseas Chinese communities. It uses characters not found in the Standard Mandarin, and is not easily intelligible to Mandarin speakers.

Cultural role

Chinese has numerous regional and local varieties, many of which are mutually unintelligible; most of these are rarely used or heard outside their native areas, and are forbidden in education, formal purposes, or in the media by the Chinese government. Cantonese, including its prestige Standard Cantonese, tends to be used primarily within Cantonese-speaking regions with other native speakers, together with officially designated Standard Mandarin being used for official purposes, in the media, and as the language of education. Even though the majority of Cantonese speakers live in mainland China, due to the linguistic history of Hong Kong and Macau, as well as its use in many overseas Chinese communities, the use of Cantonese has spread from Guangdong far out of proportion to its relatively small number of speakers in China.

As the majority of Hong Kong and Macau people and/or their ancestors emigrated from Guangdong before the widespread use of Standard Mandarin, Standard Cantonese is the variety of Chinese spoken in Hong Kong and Macau. Standard Cantonese is the only variety of Chinese other than Standard Mandarin to be used in official contexts. Because of its use by non-Mandarin-speaking Cantonese speakers overseas, the Standard Cantonese and Taishanese are some of the primary forms of Chinese that Westerners come into contact with.

Along with Mandarin and Taiwanese Minnan, Standard Cantonese is one of the few varieties of Chinese which has its own popular music (Cantopop). The prevalence of Hong Kong's popular culture has spurred some Chinese in other regions to learn Cantonese. In Hong Kong, Standard Cantonese is dominant in the domain of popular music, and many artists from Beijing and Taiwan have to learn Cantonese so that they can make Cantonese versions of their recordings especially for distribution in Hong Kong.[6] Some singers including Faye Wong and Eric Moo, and singers from Taiwan, have been trained in Cantonese to add "Hong Kong-ness" to their performances[6].

The contrast is especially clear with other branches of Chinese, such as Wu. Wu has more speakers than Cantonese; it is spoken in an area that is approximately equally wealthy; and Shanghainese, the modern prestige dialect of Wu, is spoken in Shanghai, the economic center of Mainland China. However, Shanghainese is not used in official contexts, does not have a form of popular music, and is virtually unknown in the West. This is because usage of Shanghainese is discouraged by the government, and is banned in schools.[7] In addition, virtually all Shanghai people can speak Standard Mandarin and use Shanghainese only with other Shanghainese speakers. Therefore, Shanghainese is rarely used outside of the city. A similar situation pertains to most varieties of Chinese. However, Hong Kongers do not speak much Mandarin, and most continue to use Standard Cantonese as their only spoken form of Chinese. However, spurred on by the success of Cantonese, some Wu speakers have begun to promote their mother tongue.

Loanwords

Main article: Hong Kong Cantonese

Life in Hong Kong is characterised by the blending of Asian (mainly south Chinese) and Western influences, as well as the status of the city as a major international business centre. Influences from this territory are widespread in foreign cultures. As a results, many loanwords are created and exported to China, Taiwan and Singapore. Some of the loanwords are even more popular than their Chinese counterparts. At the same time, some new words created are vividly borrowed by other languages as well.

Cantonese versus Mandarin in Hong Kong and Singapore

The so-called "Battle between Cantonese and Mandarin" started in Hong Kong in the mid-1980s when a large number of non-Cantonese speaking mainland Chinese people started crossing the border into Hong Kong during Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms. At that time, Hong Kong and Macau were still British and Portuguese protectorates respectively, and Mandarin was not often heard in those territories. Today Mandarin is often taught as a second language in those areas, but is not used at all in daily life by anyone except immigrants from the non-Cantonese speaking parts of the mainland. Businesspeople from the mainland and the colonies who did not share a common language shared a mutual dislike and distrust of one another, and in magazines in China in the mid-1980s, they would publish polemics against the other's language - thus Cantonese became known on the mainland as "British Chinese" - and Mandarin became known as "流氓話 Lau Man Waa" - literally "outlaw speech" - in the colonies.

In Singapore the government has had a Speak Mandarin Campaign (SMC) which seeks to actively promote the use of Standard Mandarin Chinese over other forms of Chinese such as Hokkien (45% of the Chinese population), Teochew (22.5%), Cantonese (16%), Hakka (7%) and Hainanese. This was seen as a way of creating greater cohesion among the ethnic Chinese. In addition to positive promotion of Mandarin, the campaign also includes active attempts to dissuade people from using Chinese dialects. Most notably, the use of dialects in local broadcast media is banned, and access to foreign media in dialect is limited. Some believe that the Singaporean Government has gone too far in its endeavour. Some Taiwanese songs in some Taiwanese entertainment programmes have been singled out and censored. Japanese and Korean drama series are available in their original languages on TV to the viewers, but Hong Kong drama series on non-cable TV channels are always dubbed in Mandarin and broadcast in Singapore without their original Cantonese soundtrack. Some Cantonese speakers in Singapore feel the dubbing causes the series to sound very unnatural and lose much of its flavour.

An offshoot of SMC is the Pinyinisation of certain terms which originated from southern Chinese languages. For instance, dim sum is often known as dianxin in Singapore's English language media, though this is largely a matter of style, and most Singaporeans will refer to dim sum when speaking English. Another result of SMC is that most young Singaporeans from Cantonese speaking families are unable to understand or speak Cantonese. The situation is very different in nearby Malaysia, where even most non-Cantonese speaking Chinese can understand the dialect to a certain extent through exposure to the language.

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Yale romanization scheme for Standard Cantonese of Cantonese. For other native names, see section "Names."
  2. ↑ Ramsey and Ethnologue, respectively.
  3. ↑ traditional Chinese: 廣州話 or 廣府話; simplified Chinese: 广州话 or 广府话; pinyin: Guǎngzhōu huà or Guángfǔ huà; Jyutping: Gwong2zau1 wa2 or Gwong2fu2 wa2
  4. ↑ traditional Chinese: 省城話; simplified Chinese: 省城话; pinyin: Shěngchéng huà; Jyutping: Saang2seng4 wa2
  5. ↑ traditional Chinese: 廣東話; simplified Chinese: 广东话; pinyin: Guǎngdōng huà; Jyutping: Gwong2dong1 wa2
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Donald, Stephanie. Keane, Michael. Hong, Yin. [2002] (2002). Media in China: Consumption, Content and Crisis. Routledge Mass media policy. ISBN 0700716149. pg 113
  7. ↑ "Cultural identity, conflicts with Putonghua, status, and bans". Zanhei.com. Retrieved on 2006-08-03.

External links

Dictionaries

Cantonese dictionaries or databases with spoken Cantonese entries

Character-only Cantonese pronunciation dictionaries

Other links